“That’s clarified butter,” Sterling says, and I turn to see him looking at the dosa exactly how he looks at me whenever we’re alone.
“Wow” is all I can find to say. He means it when he says he loves food.
The dosa begin turning deep brown, and the cook reaches into his small fridge and takes out an industrial size vat of what looks like neon-yellow mashed potatoes and green vegetables. He puts two huge scoops on each dosa, then carefully rolls the pancake around its filling. Then, unceremoniously, he flips the dosa onto tiny, folded cardboard trays lined with napkins and hands them to us, already taking his next order.
We find a park bench nearby, and Sterling hands me my dosa, which overhangs its cardboard tray by a half foot on either end. Steam wafts up from it, warming me and making my mouth water.
“How did you find this place?” I ask, waiting for Sterling to take a bite so I can see how it’s done.
“In New York, people look for lines,” he explains, torn between taking his first bite and gratifying my curiosity. “They make fun of it in ads and stuff like that, but it’s true all the same. If you see old, young, poor, rich, and immigrant people lining up for food, well, you should probably eat it.”
He flattens one end of his rolled pancake enough to get it in his mouth and takes a huge bite.
So much for needing pointers.
“And you saw a line here?” I prompt before taking a huge bite of my own.
The flavor is almost beyond my comprehension. There are so many spices, so many distinct flavors, it doesn’t seem possible it could all fit in one bite. The pancake is much crispier than I expect, shatter-y on the outside edge, but moist and springy inside. The filling reminds me of mashed potatoes, but only in texture. The flavor stings and soothes in equal measure. It’s dizzying.
“Yeah. It’s two p.m. now, so this is as short as his line gets.”
“Holy shit, Sterling.”
“I know.”
“It’s like everything I ate before this moment was saltine crackers.”
“I know.”
“Why isn’t this everywhere?”
“That, I don’t know.”
We eat mostly in silence, but I can’t help noticing how all the people leaving the dosa cart nod at us as they pass by, like we’re members of the same secret club. And for the length of our meal, at least, I don’t feel like an obnoxious, ignorant tourist, I feel like a New Yorker.
“What kind of dosa was this, again?” I ask, writing myself a note on my phone. I want to see if Felix can make it when I get back.
“Special Pondicherry.”
“Got it.”
He chuckles as he takes my trash and finds somewhere to toss it, then takes my hand and pulls me to my feet.
“Where to next?” I ask.
We take the subway again, this time the yellow line. After just two stops we hop off at the 23rd Street exit, and when we emerge on street level, I discover we’re in the Flatiron District.
“This is a very posh area,” Sterling explains. “Publishing, advertising, Fifth Avenue shopping runs that way.”
He indicates a direction, but between the height of the buildings and the disorienting effects of traveling underground, he might as well save himself the trouble. I’ll never keep it straight. It feels like I’m in a concrete and glass canyon. Everywhere I look there is a whole world to discover. Did I really imagine that after this I would tell people I’d seen New York? Which New York? Two people could live here for a decade and never do the same thing or eat at the same place.
And as I feel my world getting bigger, I realize how much smaller it makes Valmont and my life there. I planned to get a semester under my belt at home and then study abroad, but now there’s Sterling. How can he be content in that sleepy college town, coming from this? If the world contains all of this—not through the pages of a book or a lesson in class—how can I ever be content to live out my life in Valmont?
Impossible.
Sterling watches as I spin like a top, shepherding me before I bump into oblivious, harried natives, and pointing out things I might miss. We go for a few more blocks until we reach The Strand. I’ve heard about it, but it’s hard to believe it contains miles of books—until we step inside. We take an elevator to the fourth floor, where they keep a collection of rare or collectible books of every age, description—and price.
I don’t buy anything, partly because I don’t want to flash money in front of Sterling, but mostly because I don’t want to lug heavy books around New York. After a half hour of flipping through antique books, Sterling decides to move on, plopping a copy of The Sun Also Rises back on the table with a wistful sigh.
“I’m going to run to the bathroom,” he says. “Meet you downstairs.”
As soon as he’s gone, I buy the book and tuck it into my purse. I’ll give it to him for Christmas, so he can’t be mad.
It turns out that separating was a terrible idea, because it takes us twenty minutes to find each other again. He’s carrying a brown paper sack when he finds me.
“Reading material for the plane home,” he says. “I can’t be left in a bookstore unattended.”
“Noted.”
“Can I put it in your bag?” He reaches for the flap.
“Let me!” I grab it and carefully tuck it next to his present so he can’t see.
He leads me around another corner, and we find ourselves under massive scaffolding that covers one side of the street completely, even blocking the signs above businesses. We duck into a shop selling artisan meats and cheeses, and it takes me a moment to realize we’re actually in a sort of shopping mall devoted to, well, eating.
It dawns on me where we are. “Wait, is this…”
“This is Eataly,” Sterling
